Education minister shouldn’t watch as Nigeria bleeds

there are bizarre occurrences in every sector in Nigeria. Why many who should be concerned aren’t perturbed should make whoever loves this country wonder. This is because these are issues that when one notices them the first thought always is, how can government officials let this happen? The education sector has a few of such scenarios that I consider bizarre.

There are new developments in the sector alright, but some of them are neither positive nor indicate progress. In fact, they’re retrogressive. I understand that the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board sends applicants with the highest scores in the UTME exams to the university, while those with the lowest scores are sent to Colleges of Education. This amounts to forcing people who are not interested in teaching in that direction, herding those who are not keen into classrooms. How did such an idea fly in the first place, from whose desk, the same way some took History off the secondary school menu? I shall return to this point some day. For now, an issue regarding the provision of textbooks in Nigerian schools is what I focus on.

I picked up a secondary school textbook the other day. It was well-packaged, the initial attraction. Then, I noticed Universal Basic Education as well as Nigerian Education Research and Development Council written on it. The book is titled, ‘NERDC Basic Technology For Junior Secondary Schools (3) UBE Edition’. It has a foreign publisher with administrative offices only in Nigeria. I had thought maybe the book was published in Nigeria, until I saw in fine print at the bottom of the page – ‘Printed by BHS, Malaysia’. The reader can’t comprehend the extent to which I find this shocking. I would have been pleasantly surprised if my expectation was confirmed. But this is Nigeria where government officials are hardly able to anything different from the expected, the mediocre. How could we take this huge money-spilling project that we could use as a lever to develop our printing industry to another nation? How could education officials not make the connection between the amount of money going to other nations over printing of textbooks for Nigerian schools and the effect this has on our economy? How could they not consider placing the printing of textbooks for our schools within its proper value chain that should help this nation move forward, creating employment for millions of Nigerians?

Nothing in the stated book indicates the involvement or otherwise of the UBE and NERDC in its publication. Nothing in the book indicates whether or not government agencies cough up part of the funds for the printing in Malaysia. (Of course, we know that some Federal Government agencies award contracts to have books printed abroad. In the 2018 budget, I heard the Federal Ministry of Education mentioning some billions it wanted the National Assembly approve for it to purchase books for primary schools. It’s another issue I shall return to one day, even though I’ve noted it several times on this page why I think it’s odd that the Federal Government should procure books for schools it doesn’t own. It’s one of those exuberant and wasteful endeavours we engage in.) The only thing noted in the book is that the series is prepared based on the curriculum developed by NERDC. Even without UBE and NERDC being involved in funding the publication, when one considers the volume of different textbooks that are printed abroad and brought into Nigeria for use, one would wonder why we don’t consider doing something to stop the outflow of our funds in this regard. The publishers will sell the books here and take the money out to their mother companies, pay the printers in Malaysia, create employment in other countries.

That we don’t utilise every opportunity we have to reduce how this nation bleeds should be of concern to all. It should concern government officials who do the planning. For we always have the opportunity to do ourselves some good, but we overlook it; the same way past governments overlooked plugging the imported rice bleeding point until the latest government chose to do something about it. What does it take education officials to make the most of the opportunities in our education sector? For years, Nigerians have been going abroad to study because placements in universities are limited here. It’s good more private tertiary institutions are now being established. But we can see how much the trend to get our youths to schools abroad has affected the naira. The last time we applied the break on what the Central Bank of Nigeria should sell dollars to do, millions of parents swooped on the government, asking to be given priority to get dollars to pay their children’s school fees. The pressure was such that the naira fell to an embarrassing level, our resources taken out in the form of school fees to enrich other nations. It’s one of those areas where this nation bleeds because government planners are unperturbed about making the most of the opportunities in the education sector. As for the textbooks that millions of our young ones need in schools, we have the opportunity to make the wealth available through it stay here. But we choose to do nothing.

We know that foreign publishers have for long closed down and moved to other nations. The Nigerian literary community of which I am a part is a victim. Not many publishers take on literary works as was the case in the days of Alagba Kongi (Wole Soyinka) and Chinua Achebe. The few that publish here these days mostly wait for the work of award-winners, (and which has been published outside Nigeria), then they rush in to print and make money from the Nigerian edition.

Meanwhile, a writer needs to start somewhere. But literary starters have been crowded out. In the event our nation’s literary prowess can wane, it’s waning, but for the indefatigable Nigerian literary writers who struggle to get their materials published in other climes, refusing to give up on their dreams. The government has left us to own devices in the literary world, with our writers engaging in self-publishing or seeking for publishers outside. Who profits from the works of Nigerian writers when they have a successful product out there? Other nations. Another bleeding point.

As publishers, foreign and indigenous, abandon the literary community, they move into publishing textbooks for schools. It’s good business as some governments even pay them for large scale supply of textbooks to public schools every year. That way, the traditional publishing process is wiped out, distribution of other books apart from textbooks is disrupted. Today, publishers that engage in effective book distribution in Nigeria are rare. Why? Just as government encourages banks to make easy money from various monetary instruments while they abandon traditional banking, government gives easy money to publishers who then supply textbooks directly to them. Is it that government officials don’t think of the implications of these things on our nation? But easy money for publishers isn’t the entire problem.

This trend in the education sector is perilous. Is it not possible that just as government does something about locally-grown rice, we encourage locally published textbooks? UBE, NERDC and Ministries of Education should insist that textbooks specifically tailored to the requirement of our curriculum and meant for use in our schools should be printed in Nigeria. This is not difficult to get such publishers to comply with because no serious publisher can overlook our large market size, and in any case printing of textbooks is continual. There’s ever a profit to be made in Nigeria. One benefit of the arrangement is that our publishing sub-sector will be revamped and developed. Could the two education ministers put heads together and do something about this? It costs UBE, with the huge funds in its kitty, as well as the Federal Ministry of Education, nothing to arrange with concerned institutions and get them to assist indigenous printing companies. That way, they can import needed machines in order to undertake quality work that’s supposedly the reason publishers take our money to printers in Asia.

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